Website: "You appear to be using an ad blocker."
Me: "You appear to be correct."

Okay I checked out Gemini. I love the vibes, but the amount of dead links just in the quick start guide makes it hard for me to even try to get into it

The use of the term "Dark traffic" here is to paint the use of ad-blockers as something nefarious. Don't use it, fuck these people right in their stupid mouths.

I propose using the terms "clean traffic", for ad-blocked website traffic, and "dogshit traffic" for everything else.

That is not wrong. But interpreting "dark" as "evil" is just wrong in this context.

They call it "dark traffic" - ads that are not seen by tech-savvy users who have excellent ad blockers.

Not surprised that its growing. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and its only getting worse, and will continue to get worse every month.

I know surgeons who can’t start a zoom call. Being uneducated in a particular area is not stupidity. If you avoid dating someone over their lack of adtech knowledge, I would assume they are the one that dodged a bullet.

They call it "dark traffic" - ads that are not seen by tech-savvy users who have excellent ad blockers.

Not surprised that its growing. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and its only getting worse, and will continue to get worse every month.

Website: "You appear to be using an ad blocker."
Me: "You appear to be correct."

There was a time in the 90's where ads were mostly banners, and that was fine; google's text-only ads were completely acceptable.

But that didn't last long - it went downhill with the proliferation of popups, especially the nefarious kind which created even more popups or tried to stop the user from closing them, and usage of dialog boxes.

And whoever was the first person to add sound to an ad, i wish you and your entire family tree that your genitalia translocate to your forehead.

They call it "dark traffic" - ads that are not seen by tech-savvy users who have excellent ad blockers.

Not surprised that its growing. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and its only getting worse, and will continue to get worse every month.

mostly desktop, android phone is mostly unusable with ads. use 'privacy badger', 'ublock origin', 'umatrix'.

A YouTuber saying "before we get started, this video is sponsored by [relevant related company]" does not get blocked by ad blockers.

Well, there's sponsor block which uses crowd sourced timestamps to skip those segments, but yeah you're right.

You know you can get those extensions for Firefox (and forks) for Android, right?

There was a time in the 90's where ads were mostly banners, and that was fine; google's text-only ads were completely acceptable.

But that didn't last long - it went downhill with the proliferation of popups, especially the nefarious kind which created even more popups or tried to stop the user from closing them, and usage of dialog boxes.

And whoever was the first person to add sound to an ad, i wish you and your entire family tree that your genitalia translocate to your forehead.

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.

– Banksy

I used the internet for a long time before ad blockers even existed. Everybody simply ignored ads, instead. But that wasn't good enough for the advertisers. They weren't happy unless we were forced to look at the ads. Extraordinarily obtrusive ads. Popup ads. Popunder ads. That's when people started blocking ads. When you realized that your browser always ended up with 20 extra advertising windows.

Nobody really cared about blocking ads until advertisers forced us to. They made the internet annoying to use, and sometimes impossible to use.

Advertisers couldn't just be happy with people ignoring their ads, so they forced our hands and fucked themselves in the process. Now, we block them by default. I don't even know any websites that have unobtrusive ads because I never see their ads in the first place.

Now, they want to go back to the time when we would see their ads but ignore them. Fuck off. We know we can't even give them that much. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile.

The web has almost always been unusable without an adblocker. Ads today are less malicious, but more insidious. Clicking the wrong ad in 2003 would brick your computer. Clicking the wrong ad today means you'll have to cancel a credit card after your personal data is compiled and sold on the black market.

Nothing new. Ads don't fuel a free internet. They fuel a business model. The free internet is fueled by the time and donations of kind, dedicated people.

what is with p.i.p video everywhere. hate it. can't figure out how to block it. firefox

They call it "dark traffic" - ads that are not seen by tech-savvy users who have excellent ad blockers.

Not surprised that its growing. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and its only getting worse, and will continue to get worse every month.

Rethink DNS